Women at Work in the Deuteronomistic History - International Voices ...

28 | WOMEN AT WORK IN THE DTRH
where “YHWH sent a man, a prophet, איבנ שׁיא to the Israelites” to announce
punishment. This is an anonymous prophet who disappears from the text after
delivering his message. I have not been able to find any other instance of this
construction.
תקנימ השׁא — Breast-feeding Woman
This is the last text that might be of importance in discussing Schneider’s “how
the noun ´iššâ functions” question, plus our own question “how it modifies the
participle to imply a meaning lost to us.” The last piece of evidence is the wellknown
story of Moses’ upbringing by his own mother. In that story, Moses’
unnamed older sister offers to look for a wet nurse from the Hebrews, who
might suckle the baby. The sister’s question to Pharaoh’s daughter is, “Shall I go
and call for you an תקנימ השׁא from the Hebrew women?” (Exod 2:7).
Obviously, it is unnecessary to indicate that a woman is implied, for (apart from
the fact that only women suckle) the participle is itself feminine in form. Finally,
in Gen 35:8 the participle accompanies a proper name, Deborah, Rebekah’s wet
nurse הקבר תקנימ הרבד תמתו.
שׁגליפ השׁא — “Concubine” and Other Loaded Terms
Finally, there are some non-participles of which it is arguable whether they
belong or not to the semantic field of labor. One ambiguous term is שׁגליפ,
usually translated “concubine,” yet more accurately secondary (second-class?)
wife. 23 The point of interest here is that it acts in the same way as the
constructions studied above. םי/שׁגליפ appears only as a noun, for example, in
2 Sam 5:13 and in 1 Kgs 11:3; in both cases the narrator reports (David’s and
Solomon’s) acquisition of numerous wives. Seen together, these two are
especially interesting, for they combine two forms in one breath and also in
reverted order from each other: “ … David took more concubines and wives,
םישׁגלפ םישׁנו (2 Sam 5:13) and Solomon “had 700 princesses תורשׂ םישׁנ and
300 concubines םישׁגלפ” (1 Kgs 11:3). Noticeable is the inversion in the regular
order from major to minor, “wives and concubines” in 2 Sam 5:13. To be noted
also is the redactor’s use of the noun “women” םישׁנ to introduce only one of
the groups and his omission in the second category. Are these ellipses?
The construction םישׁגלפ םישׁנ appears in 2 Sam 15:16; 20:3 in reference
to the ten women left behind by David. In other texts, like Judg 19–20, both
forms, with and without the noun for “person,” appear (altogether, eleven times
in these chapters), with preponderance of the single form (+ suffix) שׁגליפ.
23 The ambiguity stems from the fact that many of them were also slaves; and others, like the ten
םישׁגליפ left by David in his flight from Absalom (and even worse, the one related to a Levite in
Judg 19), are not treated with the respect due to wives.